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A Self Shading facade for an IT Park in Bengaluru

Tuesday, 20 December, 2016 SURFACES REPORTER | 3 Min Read |

IT Park for an Indian MNC In Bengaluru

Created byDSP Designs, The new facility for 15,000 work-force is proposed by using a Dia-grid to integrate façade and structure design. The parametric façade design facilitates glare free work environment.

The external wall is conceived as an animated, dynamic skin reflecting the bustle of the street and activating what would otherwise have been a mundane façade with minimal fenestrations. The porosity of the wall maintains a degree of privacy while playfully engaging with the street corner.

The new facility for 15,000 work-force is envisioned to be a “Symbol by creating a new city landmark” and believe that the architecture of this new headquarters should reflect the company’s rising international influence.

An avant-garde Structural expressionism, usually implicit in Architecture, is proposed by using a Dia-grid to integrate façade and structure design. This helps to provide floor and façade efficiency and panoramic views. The parametric façade design facilitates glare free work environment.

The main arrival experience is envisaged to be at the landscaped podium and allows employees to reach via majestic flight of steps. These also provide for a community space for various groups to interact, besides promoting walking.

The aim here is to provide “a culture-change” that would encourage more interaction among the office members. The solution demands the ethos of “A Vertical Campus”. This is achieved by connecting bridges between the buildings, providing indoor garden atria, fully integrating natural elements of exterior with interior workspace.

The twisted form provides self-shading and hence shields itself from the strongest solar gain decreasing the heating effect of direct sunlight and increasing comfort levels for occupants. The best feature about this development is the parametric approach for an environmentally responsive design.

The façade is designed to allow optimal sunlight penetration by playing with the curves to create self-shading surfaces. Six types of triangular shading device modules are carefully curated with a depth variation based on shading coefficients to be mounted on the dia- grid façade, in order to have optimum shading on all the sides. This design would significantly reduce energy consumption of building, making optimal use of natural light.

The innovative architecture has a dominant structural form where the floor plate is getting twisted at every floor. The architecture has marked uncluttered simplicity. Since structural expressionism is implicit in Architecture, an innovative solution of using facade as structural skin is suggested. Structural skin offers an unequivocal relation between form and structure as both interior space and exterior volume are defined by the same shape. Typical facade requires closely spaced supporting members as sizes of glass panels cannot be too large. Using façadeas structural skin allows facade members to be used more efficiently to support structure.

The facade is proposed in diamond shaped grid. Inclined steel members forming the diamond shaped grid will be used to support facade as well as structural slabs. Two storey high typical diamond shaped unit is proposed for this di-grid. Horizontal members provided at floor level will be at centre of this unit. These horizontal members will transfer the floor loads to main inclined members. Span of these horizontal members is proposed as 3.6m. This span can be adjusted to suit facade glass panel width. Architectural grid is proposed at 11m x 11m. 300mm thick post tensioned flat plate is proposed for these spans. The structure facade will be combined with reinforced concrete core to support gravity loads. The core walls will also be used to resist lateral loads. Span between core walls and structural facade is around 11m at lower floors. As the floor plate goes on twisting, distance between core walls and structural facade increases at some locations. Additional columns are introduced to restrict spans to 11m.

One of the main advantages of structural facades is liberation of interior spaces from structural supports. However in present case, the twisting geometry leading to larger spans at some floors is making it difficult to provide column-free spaces. At locations where spans are exceeding 11m, steel beams and deck slab can be provided in place of PT flat slabs to have complete column free spaces. This alternative can be explored further in schematic stage. The reinforced concrete cores are subjected to torsion which is inherent due to twisting geometry of the structure. However, the complete box structure of the core can easily resist the torsion as well as all the forces caused by lateral loads like seismic and wind. All the rest of the columns will be designed only for gravity loads.

The structural scheme is also suitable for speedy construction. Core walls using jump-form shuttering system and structural steel facade can be constructed parallel with nominal tie members provided between core and structural facade members for lateral stability of facade members. Slabs can follow later with conventional construction methods.

This facility will surely be a visual experience to the onlookers making it both Iconic and Futuristic, thereby speaking itself about the leading position of the IT Firm in the 21st century.

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